Owner Tamás Langmáhr has gone from being the “last” in the chain of subcontractors, so to speak, to being the main contractor with his company founded nearly a quarter of a century ago. As a result of gradual expansion, his business has five main focuses. By concentrating on lifting technology, machine installation, machine rental, sales and expert services, he and his professional management team aim to become an increasingly strong and dominant mid-size player on the Hungarian market. Everyone, from interns to the owner, takes this goal seriously and is working towards it. For them, the saying of “shared aims, shared success” is not an empty slogan. The company’s management is extremely proud of all of their jobs, whether big or small. In the course of our conversation, what emerged was the picture of a highly professional, exceptionally committed company that wants to grow. This is true of the owner, the management and the employees.

Four years ago, Tamás Langmáhr decided to always respond to the special needs of the production sector under the motto “improved service, improved delivery”, in other words, he would offer increasingly complex possible lifting technology solutions and services to the companies in this sector. “Our aim was to be needed not only for minor lifting jobs, but to be relied on for our full range of special equipment as well as the engineering know-how at our disposal. Using these, we are able to offer turnkey solutions such as installing or transforming full production lines at production halls. We can charge a higher fee for higher quality services to cover our investment costs”, explains the company owner about their strategy.

“The most important expectation of the production sector is to complete the installation or relocation of production lines as fast as possible, since the amount of downtime should be kept to a minimum. Having your own fleet of specialised machinery is crucial for the installation within a production hall. Currently, we are able to move multi-ton production machines using our compact and fully electronic cranes, which are considered a novelty even in Europe. There will be no need to break the roofing structures of the hall or to have a diesel motor running within a closed space, which means we can do our work much faster and with much less environmental impact” says Tamás Langmáhr, illustrating the unique solutions offered by Megakrán Llc. with its nearly 200 pieces of machinery.

Besides performing the job quickly and to high standards, safety is also a top priority. It happened before that a client chose another company which offered a lower price, but ended up sustaining serious damage to the relocated machines worth several hundred million forints, and in the absence of an insurance, the “cheap contractor” was unable to fulfill the contract. Megakrán Llc. takes pride in having an annual liability insurance of HUF 700 million to cover unexpected faults or damage. “This also lends us a major competitive edge, and we have also been able to educate the market – today, most clients will only hire companies that have insurance”, adds Tamás Langmáhr.

There is clear positive feedback from the market suggesting that the company is continuously developing. While two years ago, Megakrán had a staff of only 20, today it employs 90 people and its revenues have been growing by 15 to 20% annually over the last few years. The company has four sites in Hungary (Mór, Nyíregyháza, Győr, Székesfehérvár) focused on the domestic market, but plans to build a new site this year in order to be able to fulfill orders even faster through a better coverage. Their medium-term goals include securing the northern Transdanubian, as well as southern Slovakian and the Bratislava markets, where the companies that use their services are based.

The management takes an optimistic view of the future. With the growth of the production sector and the unique features of the lifting technology market, they are expecting expansion in the field. “This is why, in addition to continuously increasing our lifting capacity and machinery fleet, we can only keep up by trying to shape the market”, puts in Péter Vitkovics, who is the board member responsible for the development of the organisation. Megakrán set a completely new course by getting involved in organisation development in order to become a true mid-sized company. Accordingly, strategic and operative decisions were separated, and single-person management was replaced by a professional management team at the helm of the company’s five divisions.

The company’s intensive growth is only limited by its equipment capacity, forcing them to refuse several orders. Instead of relying on loans or leasing, they are working on bringing in investors in order to become the biggest and, at the same time, the leading player on the lifting technology market. For this reason, this year Megakrán joined the Budapest Stock Exchange’s ELITE Programme launched in Hungary in 2016 and designed to help companies obtain external funding and broaden their network of contacts in addition to offering a comprehensive training programme.

The company’s focus on long-term development is signified by the fact that training and the development of human resources is a high priority at every level. Megakrán’s top and middle managers use the ELITE Programme to accumulate knowledge in the area of company development, as well as financial and strategic planning. The company also holds regular in-house trainings to teach the latest management techniques.

There is also special focus on ongoing training in the use of cranes and machinery, which is crucial for the operation of the modern machinery used in their everyday work. “In addition to the expectations of the market, the reason we need this is to build an employer brand that promotes employee satisfaction and makes our people want to work with us on the long term. Also because the training of a crane operator takes nearly two years and costs between HUF 7 and 10 million”, notes Péter Vitkovics. They make tremendous efforts to ensure employee satisfaction. Besides higher wages, not typical on the market, as well as benefits, they also motivate their workers with a sliding pay scale based on a performance rating system.  “It definitely has an impact: our employees feel that the management really listens to their needs, and this is crucial in creating a functioning workplace environment and corporate culture. Besides financial recognition, we used this approach to make sure we never have a shortage of labour and we constantly get applications even without advertising job offers.”